Granted sales people thrive on competition, however the problem is that leaderboards tend to be misused with disastrous consequences. The good news is that once you’re aware of these epic fails, the damage is reversible and you’ll be less likely to repeat the same mistakes.

So, how do you know if your sales leaderboards are doomed? Simply ask yourself if you’re doing these five major mistakes:

Is your CRM perfect? Can you click a button and get a pipeline that will easily turn into an accurate sales forecast? If your answer is yes, you’re one of the lucky few.

Managing the sales pipeline based on the data present in your CRM is tricky, and it’s not because your sales people do a bad job or because something is amiss in your CRM. It is because of these 6 bad habits that wreck your ability to manage the sales pipeline based on the data in the CRM system alone.

This post is the second in a series of three posts, all dedicated to discussing the employee engagement funnel. You can read the first post in this series here.

The employee engagement funnel, although inspired by the sales funnel, isn’t about choosing employees or promoting them. The employee engagement funnel is about making employees aware of corporate goals and engaging them in learning and in getting others to align with corporate goals.
The funnel is a step-by-step visual demonstration of how each employee goes through the process of engagement, beginning with awareness of corporate goals, going through training and learning of corporate practices or offerings and eventually leading other employees through the same path.

When a new customer service representative joins a service team, a new sales rep joins a sales team, or even when a new user starts using our product/service, we need to take them through an on-boarding process. This process allows them to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills.

Tactics used in this process include formal meetings, lectures, videos, review of printed materials, or computer-based orientations. However, in many cases the process may lead to discouragement and frustration.

Gamification can improve the on-boarding process. A game-like user experience is used to improve the self-learning process, in order to save money and time as well as improve the training success rate.

Here are five tips for using gamification during the on-boarding process: